Ryan Peter. Writer.

Ghostwriter. Author. Journalist.

Are Video Games Art?

June 10, 2010

I’ve written a short opinion piece at gaming.do.co.za called Are Video Games Art. For those who are artistically inclined they may find it interesting. I think it raises some interesting questions around this new art medium which is not considered art by a lot of critics.

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Peter

Ryan your “check it out” above is linking to something else. Nonetheless, may I add that art is fast beoming a video game and life is not far behind that. I am told that Princess Fiona was so real they had to pull her back to fantasy, so its just a matter of time when movies, weather reporters and news-announcers might be low paid, non-unionised, government serving algorithims. Today you can pay more for plastic flowers than the real thing and in time people will want a fourth dimension in art and pay for that too – it will have to move to be art. I hope I am not being too cynical. There is a side of me that says life will correct, for every trend in past decades has retroed. Thus many kids of today are enjoying 60s music, paper books and other analogue experiences, whilst other kids are being disadvantaged by their lack of relational skills (having spent too much in a 2 dimensional, cyber-world). So I hope and trust we will pull back.

timvictor

Ryan Peter

A friend of mine who teaches at a private school recently related a story where he had to actually sit some of his kids down and encourage them to interact non-digitally.

He discovered that kids would sit on other sides of the playground and Facebook each other through their phones, rather than actually sit and talk to each other. Things got worse when kids were actually dating on Facebook or MXIT, claiming to be girlfriend and boyfriend, but actually never spent any physical time with each other. They were in a cyber-relationship, and there wasn’t even any need to be as they went to the same school!

It’s a strange dynamic but I have found the older I get the more I appreciate older things. Maybe it’s because a lot of my favourite music now has also dated.

I used to read a lot as a kid and then dumped the reading in my early teens for video games. In my later teens I dumped the video games for music. In my middle 20’s I began to pick up books again — now at 30 I can appreciate all three types of mediums.

So I think as people mature so they often revert back to some of the more traditional mediums. Entertainment might always require things to ‘move’, lots of action etc. but most older people I know appreciate a good book whereas they would never have bothered reading when they were younger.